New Weather Channel series will focus on Coast Guard bases in Clearwater, Miami and Florida Keys

A Coast Guard Jayhawk crew from the station in Clearwater completes a water rescue drill last month. The station will be featured in a Weather Channel documentary TV series starting in October. Air Station Clearwater is the Coast Guard's largest and busiest base. SCOTT KEELER | Times

A documentary TV series following the U.S. Coast Guard's Air Station Clearwater will premiere on the Weather Channel in October.

The 13 hourlong episodes of Coast Guard Florida will follow the air base's search-and-rescue missions, drug seizures and border patrols across the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.

Produced in part by Today show co-anchor and weather reporter Al Roker, the series is an outgrowth of Coast Guard Alaska, which premiered last year.

Roker announced the series Wednesday from a C-130 aircraft at the air station at St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport.

The series also will follow missions launched from Coast Guard bases in Miami and the Keys. Each is part of the Coast Guard's 7th District, which monitors 15,000 miles of coastline across the southeastern United States and the Caribbean Basin with 39 cutters, 190 boats and 36 aircraft.

Relocated from Albert Whitted Airport in St. Petersburg in 1976, Air Station Clearwater is now called the Coast Guard's largest and busiest base.

Another local Coast Guard base, Station Sand Key, rescues stranded boaters across 2,000 square miles between John's Pass and Aripeka.

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